He was basketball’s unstoppable force, the most awesome offensive force the game has ever seen. Asked to name the greatest players ever to play basketball, most fans and aficionados would put Wilt Chamberlain at or near the top of the list.
Dominating the game as few players in any sport ever have, Chamberlain seemed capable of scoring and rebounding at will, despite the double- and triple-teams and constant fouling tactics that opposing teams used to try to shut him down.
As Oscar Robertson put it in the Philadelphia Daily News when asked whether Chamberlain was the best ever, “The books don’t lie.”
The record books are indeed heavy with Chamberlain’s accomplishments. He was the only NBA player to score 4,000 points in a season. He set NBA single-game records for most points (100), most consecutive field goals (18) and most rebounds (55). Perhaps his most mind-boggling stat was the 50.4 points per game he averaged during the 1961-62 season — and if not that, then perhaps the 48.5 minutes per game he averaged that same year.
He retired as the all-time leader in career points with 31,419, which was later surpassed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Dirk Nowitzki. He is tops in rebounds with 23,924. He led the NBA in scoring seven years in a row. He was the league’s top rebounder in 11 of his 14 seasons. And as if to prove that he was not a selfish player, he had the NBA’s highest assist total in 1967-68.
Wilt Chamberlain, an unstoppable player in the paint, won 4 MVP awards, was named to 13 All-Star teams and won the NBA title twice during his Hall of Fame career.
But the most outstanding figures are his scoring records; Most games with 50+ points, 118; Most consecutive games with 40+ points, 14; Most consecutive games with 30+ points: 65; Most consecutive games with 20+ points: 126; Highest rookie scoring average: 37. 6 ppg; Highest field goal percentage in a season: .727. And with many of these, the player in second place is far behind. His name appears so often in the scoring record books that his name could be the default response any time a question arises concerning a scoring record in the NBA.
During his career, his dominance precipitated many rules changes. These rules changed included widening the lane, instituting offensive goaltending and revising rules governing inbounding the ball and shooting free throws (Chamberlain would leap with the ball from behind the foul line to deposit the ball in the basket).
No other player in NBA history has spawned so many myths nor created such an impact. It’s difficult to imagine now, with the seemingly continuing surge of bigger skilled players, the effect of playing against Chamberlain, who was not only taller and stronger than almost anyone he matched up against but remarkably coordinated as well. A track and field star in high school and college, Chamberlain stood 7-1 and was listed at 275 pounds, though he filled out and added more muscle as his career progressed and eventually played at over 300 pounds.
An incident recounted in the Philadelphia Daily News involving Tom Meschery of the Seattle SuperSonics illustrated what it was like to play in the trenches against Chamberlain. Meschery had the ball in the line and put up four fakes before attempting his shot. Chamberlain slapped the ball down. Meschery got it again, faked again, and got it blocked again. Enraged and frustrated, the Seattle player ran up to Chamberlain swinging. As if in a scene from The Three Stooges, Chamberlain put his hand on the 6-6 Meschery’s head and let him swing away harmlessly. After the third swing, Chamberlain said, “That’s enough,” and Meschery stopped.
Chamberlain’s power was legendary. Rod Thorn, who has been a player, coach, GM and NBA executive, remembers a fight in which Chamberlain reached down and picked up a fellow player from a pile of bodies as if he were made of feathers. The man was 6-foot-8 and weighed 220 pounds.
Go back in time and learn about Wilt Chamberlain's early years growing up, and early years in the NBA.
Chamberlain was one of the few players of his day who had the sheer strength to block a dunk. In a game against New York in 1968, Walt Bellamy, the Knicks’ 6-11, 245-pound center, attempted to dunk on Chamberlain. “Bellamy reared back,” one spectator who was there later recalled to the Philadelphia Daily News, “and was slamming the ball down when Wilt put his hand above the top of the rim and knocked the ball off the court. He almost knocked Bellamy off the court, too.”
Strength was something Chamberlain developed as a college and professional player. Photographs of him in high school show a slender, agile boy who, at 6-11, towered above the other players. In three varsity seasons at Philadelphia’s Overbrook High, starting in 1952-53, Chamberlain led the team to records of 19-2, 19-0, and 18-1. His coaches there took full advantage of his gifts. The team would practice missing free throws so that Chamberlain could grab them and score field goals. At a time when goaltending was legal, Chamberlain sometimes infuriated his teammates by tipping balls in on their way down, even if they were on target.
During his prep years, he scored 2,206 points and had individual games in which he scored 90, 74 and 71 points. In his senior year he averaged 44.5 points. In his 90-point game he scored 60 points in 12 minutes of the second half. “But it’s nothing,” Chamberlain said in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1991, “when you consider that the team we were playing against was trying to freeze the ball.”
It was also during this time that one of his nicknames, “the Stilt,” was coined by a local newspaper writer. Chamberlain detested it, as he did other monikers that called attention to his height, such as “Goliath.” The names he didn’t mind were “Dippy” and “Dipper,” along with the later variant, “Big Dipper.” The story goes that Chamberlain’s buddies seeing him dip his head as his walked through doorways tagged him with the nickname and it stuck.
In 1955, Chamberlain announced he would play college ball at the University of Kansas. Because NCAA rules at the time prohibited freshmen from playing at the varsity level, Chamberlain was placed on the freshman team upon his arrival at Kansas. His first contest with the freshmen was against the varsity, which was favored to win its conference that year. Chamberlain later reminisced about the game in the Philadelphia Daily News: “We whipped ’em, 81-71. I had 40 or 42 points, about 30 rebounds, about 15 blocks. I knew I had to show them either I could do it or I couldn’t.”
Chamberlain made his debut for the Jayhawks’ varsity squad in a game against Northwestern on Dec. 3, 1956. He set a school record when he scored 52 points in an 87-69 victory. Chamberlain then guided Kansas to the 1957 NCAA title game against North Carolina. Although North Carolina beat Kansas by one point in triple overtime, Chamberlain was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Look back at some of the best moments from Wilt Chamberlain's legendary career.
The following year he was selected to all-conference and All-America teams. He showed his athletic versatility by winning the high jump competition in the Big Eight track and field championships, clearing the bar at 6-6. In May, 1958 Chamberlain decided to forego his senior season at Kansas, opting instead to turn pro. But because of an NBA rule that prevented college players from playing in the league until their class graduated, he was in limbo for one year. He passed the time by playing for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1958-59 for a salary reported to be around $50,000, an astronomical sum at the time.
In 1950, the NBA created a special “territorial” draft rule that allowed a team to claim a local college player in exchange for giving up its first-round pick. The idea was to cash in on college stars who had built strong local followings, but the Philadelphia Warriors, who were owned by the cagey Eddie Gottlieb, took it one step further.
They claimed Chamberlain as a territorial pick even though he had played his college ball in Kansas. Gottlieb, one of the NBA’s founding fathers, argued that Chamberlain had grown up in Philadelphia and had become popular there as a high school player, and since there were no NBA teams in Kansas, they held his territorial rights. The league agreed, marking the only time in NBA history that a player was made a territorial selection based on his pre-college roots.
When Chamberlain finally slipped on a Philadelphia uniform for the start of the 1959-60 season, the basketball world eagerly awaited the young giant’s debut — and he didn’t disappoint. In his first game, against the Knicks in New York, he pumped in 43 points and grabbed 28 rebounds. In a sensational rookie year, Chamberlain averaged 37.6 points and 27.0 rebounds and was named NBA Rookie of the Year, All-Star Game Most Valuable Player and NBA Most Valuable Player as well as being selected to the All-NBA First Team. Only Wes Unseld would duplicate Chamberlain’s feat of winning Rookie of the Year and MVP honors in the same season. (Unseld did it in 1968-69.)
With Chamberlain, the Warriors vaulted from last to second and faced the Boston Celtics in the 1960 NBA Playoffs. The series saw the first postseason confrontation between Chamberlain and defensive standout Bill Russell, a matchup that would grow into the greatest individual rivalry in the NBA and possibly any sport. During the next decade, the pair would square off in the playoffs eight times. Chamberlain came away the victor only once. In that initial confrontation, Chamberlain outscored Russell by 81 points, but the Celtics took the series, four games to two.
Chamberlain’s inaugural season seemed to take a heavy toll on him. After the postseason loss to Boston, the rookie stunned his fans by announcing that he was thinking of retiring because of the excessively rough treatment he had endured from opponents. He feared that if he played another season, he would be forced to retaliate, and that wasn’t something he wanted to do.
In Chamberlain’s first year, and for several years afterward, opposing teams simply didn’t know how to handle him. Tom Heinsohn, the great Celtics forward who later became a coach and broadcaster, said Boston was one of the first clubs to apply a team-defense concept to stop Chamberlain. “We went for his weakness,” Heinsohn told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1991, “tried to send him to the foul line, and in doing that he took the most brutal pounding of any player ever. I hear people today talk about hard fouls. Half the fouls against him were hard fouls.”
Of course, Chamberlain didn’t retire. He simply endured the punishment and learned to cope with it, bulking up his muscles to withstand the constant shoving, elbowing and body checks other teams used against him.
In a virtual repeat of his rookie year, he poured in 38.4 points and 27.2 rebounds per game in 1960-61. The next season he made a quantum leap in his performance. Posting a phenomenal average of 50.4 points per game, he became the only player in history to score 4,000 points in a season.
On March 2, 1962, Chamberlain set a record that may stand forever. In a game against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pa., he scored 100 points in four quarters to help the Warriors win the game, 169-147. Despite the fact that Chamberlain had reportedly stayed out all night the previous evening, he obviously came ready to play against the Knicks. Chamberlain was so “on” that he even made 28 of 32 free throws, despite having, up to that point in the season, just a paltry . 506 percentage from the stripe.
Wilt Chamberlain cemented his name in NBA history when he scored 100 points on March 2, 1962.
He hit 36-for-63 from the field, about which he commented to HOOP magazine, “My God, that’s terrible. I never thought I’d take that many shots in a game.” Toward the end of the game, the Warriors went out of their way to feed Chamberlain the ball, to the point of fouling the Knicks whenever they had possession.
In 1962, Chamberlain moved with the franchise to San Francisco, and he led the league in scoring in both 1962-63 and 1963-64. The Warriors lost to the Celtics in the 1964 Finals in five games. But midway through the following season, he was sent back home to Philadelphia. Two days after the 1965 All-Star Game (a game in which he scored 20 points and pulled down 16 rebounds), Chamberlain was swapped to the 76ers, formerly the Syracuse Nationals until the 1963-64 season, for Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer, Paul Neumann and $150,000. In Philadelphia, he joined a promising 76ers team that included Hal Greer and Larry Costello in the backcourt and Chet Walker and Luke Jackson up front.
The Sixers were a .500 ballclub in Chamberlain’s initial year on the team. The following season, 1965-66, Philadelphia posted the best record in the league, at 55-25, but for the second year in a row the 76ers fell to Boston in the Eastern Division Finals. Philadelphia, which had added talented forward Billy Cunningham, started the year by winning 45 of its first 49 games en route to an 68-13 record, at the time the best in league history.
In the division semifinals, the Sixers ousted Cincinnati. The division finals saw the 76ers matched up against the Celtics — and Chamberlain matched up against Russell once again. After years of frustration, Chamberlain finally got by his arch rival as Philadelphia raced by Boston in five games, ending the Celtics’ eight-year stranglehold on the NBA title. Playing the Warriors in the 1967 NBA Finals, the Sixers came away with the championship, winning the series in six games.
After his monstrous scoring year in 1961-62, Chamberlain’s average dropped slowly each year until the 1967-68 season, when it rose slightly to 24. 3 points per game from 24.1 the season before. During his first seven years Chamberlain scored an average of 39.4 points per game and led the league in scoring all seven seasons, a string matched only by Michael Jordan two decades later. In Chamberlain’s second seven years, he averaged 20.7 points.
Was the waning production attributable to the effects of age and better defenses? Chamberlain didn’t think so. “I look back and know that my last seven years in the league versus my first seven years were a joke in terms of scoring,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News. “I stopped shooting — coaches asked me to do that, and I did. I wonder sometimes if that was a mistake.”
One of the main reasons coaches asked him to shoot less was to try to win more. Of the 14 years he played in the NBA, only twice did his teams emerge with the NBA title. In 1966-67, Sixers coach Alex Hannum asked Chamberlain to pass the ball more often than shoot, and to play more aggressive defense. The strategy worked. Although he failed to win the NBA scoring title for the first time in his career, averaging 24.1 points, Chamberlain recorded the league’s highest shooting percentage (.683), had the most rebounds (24.2 rpg), and was third in assists (7.8 apg).
Chamberlain took his new role so seriously that he led the league in assists the next season. In 1967-68, he was also chosen to the All-NBA First Team for the seventh and final time and selected league MVP for the fourth and final time. After taking the Eastern Division that season, the Sixers were eliminated in the conference finals for the third time in four seasons by the Celtics. Soon after, Chamberlain was traded to the Lakers for Jerry Chambers, Archie Clark and Darrall Imhoff.
He spent his final five campaigns in Los Angeles and helped the Lakers to the NBA Finals four times in those five seasons. The most notable season was 1971-72, in which he scored only 14.8 points per game. But his contributions came in other forms. At age 35, he managed to grab 19. 2 rebounds per contest and was selected to the NBA All-Defensive First Team.
Chamberlain had become a great team player, complementing the styles of guards Jerry West and Gail Goodrich and forwards Happy Hairston and Jim McMillian. The 1971-72 Lakers set an NBA record by winning 33 games in a row en route to a then NBA-record 69-13 regular-season mark, one victory better than Chamberlain’s 1966-67 Sixers team (the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would post a 72-10 record in 1995-96). The Lakers then stormed to the championship with a five-game triumph against New York in the 1972 NBA Finals.
Retiring from the NBA at the end of the 1972-73 season, Chamberlain went on to demonstrate the full range of his talents. Eclectic didn’t begin to describe his activities. Like many pro players, he spent a year coaching at the pro level, for the San Diego Conquistadors of the American Basketball Association. San Diego had wanted him to be a player-coach, but legal entanglements prevented that, and Chamberlain soon became bored with a coach-only role. In 1984 he acted in the movie “Conan the Barbarian”. Big-league volleyball attracted his energies for a while, as did tennis, running marathons and even polo. At one point he hoped to challenge Muhammad Ali to a world heavyweight fight.
Chris Webber narrates the story of Wilt Chamberlain's impact on the NBA.
Even when he was in his 50s, a story would pop up every now and then about some NBA team talking to Chamberlain about making a comeback, figuring he could still give them 15 or 20 solid minutes as a backup center. Chamberlain, who loved the limelight, seemed to bask in those reports, but he never took up any team on its offer. Rather he continued to be a voracious reader who also published several books and involved himself with other pursuits including maintaining a lively bachelor’s existence.
In 1978, his first year of eligibility, Chamberlain was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1996-97 he was selected to the NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team.
On Oct. 12, 1999, Chamberlain passed away at the age of 63 due to heart failure at his home.
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Wilt Chamberlain: Black History Month Tribute | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors
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Kevin McGuireSenior Analyst IFebruary 15, 2009
When it comes to black athletes in Philadelphia's history, there is probably no bigger name than Wilt Chamberlain. To many, Chamberlain is the greatest player in the history of basketball, and it is easy to understand the argument.
Few athletes changed the game they play like Chamberlain did. How many players played where the rules were changed because of their dominance? Name one besides Chamberlain and you win a prize.
Truth is, no athlete represents Philadelphia like Chamberlain. As member of the Overbrook High School basketball team, Chamberlain averaged 31 points per game in his 1953 season. Leading his team to the city title against West Catholic, Chamberlain saw triple coverage. Triple! Despite West Catholic's best defensive efforts, the young Chamberlain scored 29 points. However, West Catholic did win the game 54-42.
Chamberlain headed off to play his college ball at Kansas, located in a town that was still heavily segregated. He ignored the segregation in the town of Lawrence and roamed about town any time and any where he wished. Nobody bothered him. Chamberlain had taken one of the first steps to equality in Lawrence, as black people were treated more fairly from then on.
As a student, Chamberlain started his college basketball career on the Kansas freshman team. He also pledged to Kappa Alpha Psi and was selected to be pledge class president. In 1956, he made his varsity debut in grand fashion with 52 points and 31 rebounds in an 87-69 win over Northwestern. Both his point total and his rebound total broke NCAA records. It was a sign of things to come.
But Chamberlain was more than just a phenomenal basketball player; he was an outstanding athlete, as evidenced by his track and field career. He ran a 10.9 100-yard dash, threw a shot put 56 feet, triple jumped more than 50 feet, and won the high jump three times in Big Eight championship meets.
When his stellar college basketball career ended, Chamberlain was signed by the Harlem Globetrotters to start his professional career. The Globetrotters did not follow the NBA rules, which would not allow a college player to play professionally unless they finished their studies in college (how the times have changed). Chamberlain signed with the Globetrotters after a frustrating junior season.
Chamberlain's #13 was retired by the Globetrotters in 2000.
Not much needs to be said about his NBA career. Everybody knows about it. He started out with the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco during his tenure. It was with the Warriors that Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks in Hershey Stadium. The sad thing is there is no video of the record-breaking game, but there is one photo that is immortalized because of it.
Chamberlain also spent time with the Sixers, Lakers, and the San Diego Conquistadors before ultimately calling it a career. Although Chamberlain did not achieve as much team success as rival Bill Russell did with the Celtics, Chamberlain left an impact on the game that will never be forgotten.
Feel free to share your thoughts on Chamberlain in the comments.
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NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain was an avid volleyball player. Got 1000 bucks a game and became the face of the pro league
His team was always shorthanded.
Wilt Chamberlain was an NBA star in the 1960s and 70s. Numerous records of the great center have not been broken so far and are becoming eternal. But few people know that Chamberlain also had a huge impact on American volleyball.
He played beach all day long and also co-founded the first pro league in the States. Thanks to Chamberlain, even the New York Times began to write about volleyball, and matches were shown on national television.
Wilt Chamberlain / wikimedia.org
WILT BROUGHT BEACH VOLLEYBALL FASHION TO THE NBA
Early in the 1969/70 NBA season, Chamberlain suffered a severe knee injury that caused him to miss most of the regular season. He told the club management that part of his rehabilitation program would take place on the sand, because back in the summer of 1969 he met the best American beach volleyball player Eugene Selznick .
“Wilt came up to me and asked if I could teach him how to play volleyball. I took him to the beach and introduced him to a new way of life. He had a passion for volleyball and was doing pretty well for a 34-year-old rookie,” Selznick told Volleyball magazine. Since both Chamberlain and Selznick were bachelors, slept little, loved dancing and parties, they became close friends and talked for 30 years - until Wilt's death.
Selznick said that even when Chamberlain was still wearing a cast on his leg, he made him do a volleyball exercise - pass, sit down, get up and pass again, repeating this many times. And when the plaster was removed, Eugene drove the basketball player across the sand with a volleyball. As a result, Chamberlain strengthened his leg muscles well and returned to the playoffs, in which the Los Angeles Lakers reached the final, losing to the New York Knicks (3-4).
It was during this season that Chamberlain began wearing the Lakers gold headband, which, along with wristlets on both arms, became his hallmark. Later, these accessories became very fashionable in the NBA. According to Wilt, he got the idea while watching beach volleyball, when the players wrapped a T-shirt or other rags around their foreheads to keep sweat out of their eyes.
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During the 1970 off-season, Chamberlain worked on his volleyball skills on the beaches. It is clear that Wilt was bad in the reception and defense, but on the block his 216 cm and long arms allowed him to be a problem for his opponents. But worst of all were Chamberlain's attacks. Volleyball Hall of Famer Larry Rundle said that his shots had more power than professional volleyball players. Of course, any appearance on the beach of an NBA star drew a crowd of spectators. Selznick realized this was a chance.
"HE DID MORE FOR AMERICAN VOLLEYBALL THAN ANYONE"
He organized a national tour of the best American volleyball players. The team included Olympians Selznick, Rundle, Butch May, Rudy Suwara , and Chamberlain. In honor of their most famous player, the team was named Wilt's Big Dipper. Chamberlain hated the nicknames Goliath or Stilts given to him because of his height, but was open to the nickname Big Dipper ( big dipper/constellation Ursa Major - from English .).
From early June to mid-July, the team toured the US playing in cities and towns against local clubs. To make the most of Chamberlain's offensive capabilities, Selznick convinced the opposition that their team would play without transfers, but still play four against six opponents. Everyone agreed to these terms because they really wanted to play against the legend. Moreover, the matches of local teams against star guests were collected by 3-4 thousand spectators.
The arrival of Chamberlain and company was paid for by the host. Wilt was making $1,000 per game, and the other four players (one was a substitute) were each getting $100—great money for volleyball players in those days. For Chamberlain, of course, it was pocket money - in the Lakers he received $ 250 thousand per season.
“Suddenly all the attention was on our volleyball team because Wilt was one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. All newspapers and magazines wrote about us. He has done more for American volleyball than anyone else,” Selznick said in 2003. – When he wanted, he put on a show for the fans. After the games, hundreds of people lined up for autographs, which he happily gave out.
“Most people went to see Wilt. We also enjoyed being around him - it was fun. Playing against the best teams in the country, we won 87 out of 88 games. The only defeat was in Hawaii,” Rundle is quoted by Robert Cherry in Wilt: Larger Than Life.
CHAMBERLAIN LOVED BEACH VOLLEYBALL FOR THE ATMOSPHERE AND GIRLS
Volleyball has never been very popular outside of California and Hawaii, but when Chamberlain came in, people took notice. Fans across the country have begun to view the sport as more than a frivolous game played at family reunions. And then began broadcasting beach volleyball tournaments featuring athletic and attractive girls in bikinis, which also increased the popularity of the game.
Chamberlain loved volleyball, but he also loved the atmosphere around it. He was fascinated by the Californian way of life: beautiful scenery on the beach, card games, volleyball, parties and lots of girls. He was always a loner and a rebel, and America in the early seventies was going through a kind of cultural and sexual revolution, especially the West Coast. Wilt was happy to be at the forefront of that sexual revolution. In his autobiography, the athlete boasted that he had 20 thousand women.
1961 Chamberlain dances the twist / wikimedia.org
Chamberlain ended up building a house overlooking the ocean in Santa Monica. Its main feature was the retractable roof over the master bedroom, from which Chamberlain liked to look at the constellation Ursa Major. By the way, Wilt sponsored the Little Dippers women's team ( Ursa Minor - from English .) and in 1977 even acted as her coach.
One of Wilt's men was Cathy Gregory , with whom he played in pairs in beach volleyball. “If Wilt got into my car, it took me five weeks to get all the sand out. He took half the beach with him!” Cherry quotes her in her book. She spoke about his incredible endurance: he appeared on the beach at 11 am and could play until 6 pm. Eventually, the soles of his feet became so hard from contact with the sand that it was not difficult for him to walk barefoot on concrete or rubble. “Whether we won or lost, he always cheered me up. I think what people don't know is that he was a really empathetic, caring and generous person," Cathy said.
AMERICANS CALLED THE USSR TEAM FOR THE LEAGUE PROMOTION
Despite his passion for volleyball, Wilt did not forget about his work, although his attitude to basketball raised questions from the leaders of the Lakers. Sometimes he appeared a few minutes before the match, and barefoot. He ate a bucket of chicken and washed it down with a liter of 7 Up or orange juice, after which he went to the site. But the Lakers tolerated his antics and were rewarded for it. In 1972, the team became the NBA champion, and Chamberlain received the MVP award. He ended his NBA career at 1973rd and enjoyed volleyball.
“I decided I had done my best in basketball—setting records and leading teams in their best seasons ever. This should be enough. But all the time he was worried about my critics. Volleyball has given me a sense of security, comfort and inner peace that I have never known,” Wilt wrote in his first book.
In the summer of 1974, Chamberlain co-founded the first professional league in the United States, the International Volleyball Association (IVA). Fathers of the new league also included Oscar-winning film producer David Wolper, Paramount CEO Barry Diller and Motown Records founder Berry Gordy , and sports functionary Michael O'Hara . They had grandiose plans, including attracting volleyball players from the USSR and Czechoslovakia.
“In promoting the new league, they wanted to attract the briefly invincible Soviet national team for more publicity. We were ready to create all the conditions, to pay decent money, - the famous Soviet binder Vyacheslav Zaitsev writes in his book. - It was interesting to try, and we did not doubt our own superiority. But the Central Committee of the CPSU thought and answered: "No!".
It is worth noting that the rules in the American League were peculiar. There were two girls and a setter on the back line, and three strikers on the front line. Played without transitions. “It’s cool to turn around after a goal to high five and hug some chick than some sweaty guy,” said the San Diego player0003 Tom Madison in a 1975 interview with Sports Illustrated. At the same time, in exhibition matches, the girls were not particularly appreciated. For hitting a girl in the head, the opponent received six cans of beer.
THE LEAGUE LASTED ONLY FIVE SEASONS WITHOUT A TV CONTRACT
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The powerful Chamberlain (216 cm, 125 kg) was a player and owner of the California Bangers team in his debut season, and then played for the Los Angeles Stars. “His attacks were incredibly hard to stop. No one had seen such force before. He was a formidable weapon,” his former teammate told InsideHook Craig Thompson .
Wilt was a major league headliner. For example, in 1977 CBS Sports aired the IVA All-Star Game. Of course, only because of Chamberlain, who became the most valuable player of the match.
“In American volleyball there was no world famous athlete. And then there was Wilt Chamberlain. And had a huge impact on the perception of the game. This was the golden era of volleyball in America. He gained immense popularity. Every time Wilt played, the hall was full. The New York Times and New York Magazine have never written so much about volleyball. He hasn't changed volleyball, but he has changed attitudes towards it," Thompson said.
Chamberlain went on to become commissioner of the league, which soon began to experience problems. The main one was the lack of a television contract - not a single TV channel took the risk of buying only a developing product. Without him, the league was doomed, because 5 thousand spectators in the stands are not able to cover all costs. In addition, the owners of the Denver Comets club Robert and David Casey were arrested right at halftime for drug trafficking. From that moment on, everything rolled into the abyss and after season-1979 league closed.
Chamberlain and his associates did not manage to create a professional league in the USA similar to hockey, basketball or baseball. As did not happen a few years ago and the Olympic champion Lloy Ball . However, on a macro level, Wilt's impact on American volleyball has been enormous. Team USA won the Olympics in 1984 and 1988, and many believe that this was an echo of Chamberlain's volleyball boom.
Out of the rules. Players-reformers of the NBA
Reviewer Sportbox.ru tells about the five great basketball players in the history of the National Basketball Association, who, with their uniqueness and phenomenality, forced the leadership of the league to change the rules of the game.
There are rules in every game, but this does not mean that they are the game itself. Rules are just a framework that changes over time. He sags under the influence of new technical achievements, the demands of the public or athletes whose physical data and personality are too non-standard, too large to be subject to laws. In such cases, the system yields pliantly, realizing that the value of such athletes, not only for the game, but also for history, is too significant to be neglected. Even now, the rules of basketball are changing, it's just not as noticeable today as when the game was just being structured, and that's when many of the laws that seem ordinary to us today evolved thanks to or in spite of these people.
George Micanic
Position: Center
Activity period: 1946-1956
Changes in the Rules: Expansion of the three-second zone, rules for setting block-shots
may seem to be funny, but in the same a league where the names of centers Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Hakim Olajuwon and Shaquille O'Neal are revered, by and large, it all started with a paper-white Illinois native.
"George Mikan started it all," Shak repeatedly pointed out the importance of Mikan. 208 cm height today does not seem like a sufficient reason why you can change the rules of basketball, but with his height, Maikan was so large (111 kg) and mobile that he reigned supreme inside the three-second zone. In order to somehow try to equalize the chances of his opponents, in 1951 the league expanded the limits of space near the ring.
But even this was not enough. In those days, the throwing technique was different, and many basketball players attacked the basket without a jump, actually from an inert state. It wasn't too difficult for Mikan to jump out and not just block shots, but actually take the ball out of the flight path. Therefore, the leadership of the NBA once again had to go to the trick and forbid touching the ball after it passed the highest point of its flight phase.
To say that this made it possible to reason with Maikan is only a bit of a stretch. George began to use other elements of his offensive arsenal more often, which allowed him to grow into a more versatile basketball player and go down in NBA history as the first dominant center.
Wilt Chamberlain
Position: center
Activity period: 1959 – 1973
Rule changes: 3-second zone expansion, free kick rules
For his time, the Big Diver (nickname Wilt got because of his habit of bending down when entering doors) was an alien, for our time - half-human, half-myth. 100 points in one game, 55 rebounds in one game, with dimensions of 216 cm and 125 kg, he remained the best assistant in the league for a whole season.
It was created for the sport as such, it was cramped within the framework of any one kind. If Mikan is rightly called the dominant player in basketball, then Wilt can hardly be limited. At school, he was an excellent runner, an excellent swimmer, an outstanding track and field athlete, but in the end he chose basketball. Including because, according to Wilt, there is room for creativity in this game.
Quite possible for Wilt, but his rivals had no room for both creativity and resistance, so in 1964 the league again had to expand the three-second zone. But this was not the most revolutionary change associated with the Chamberlain name. Since free kicks were never his forte, Wilt invented the following way of breaking: he stood on the line, threw the ball into the backboard, then took two steps, jumped out and, catching the rebounded ball in the air, stuck it into the ring. In other words, what is now a show-piece in an All-Star game or a dunk contest was for Chamberlain a regular gaming routine.
Naturally, with the size of Wilt, the implementation of such free throws was one hundred percent, and therefore, in order to somehow reinforce the broken record holder, the NBA introduced a rule according to which during the breaking of fouls it is impossible to cross the free throw line. This, of course, spoiled Chamberlain's statistics, but it entered the folklore of the NBA and became one of the numerous confirmations of the uniqueness of this basketball giant.
Darryl Dawkins
Position: center
Period of activity: 1975-2000
Rule changes: Changes in the design and materials of the backboard Wonder), very much liked to hit from above. I loved it very much and very much. In the late 70s and early 80s, there wasn't a man in the NBA who - pardon the pun - had more broken shields than Dawkins.
The fans were squealing with delight, while Dawkins, meanwhile, got the hang of coming up with a name for almost every dunk: “Dr. . As for the "Splinter Rain", the bosses of the NBA were not too happy that after such tricks the basketball players complained of minor wounds, cuts, and the matches themselves had to be stopped due to the replacement of the shield. All this took too much time and money, so it was decided to equip the structure with more massive supports, and the shield surface itself was made of extra strong plexiglass.
Of course, Dawkins continued to multiply his dunks, but now, if he shattered the shield, it crumbled into small, rounded components that created much less potential threat than before.
Shakil O'Neill
Position: Center
Activity: 1992 - 2011
Changes in the Rules: Rule of zone protection
Game of O'NILS FRIEND FRIEN impact on basketball we all have yet to come over time. With all his accomplishments, antics and jumps, Shaq, meanwhile, is the only center since Wilt Chamberlain to have so dominated his opponents.
Starting from the mid-90s, when, as in the case of Dawkins, Shaq had to change the principles of installation and production of basketball backboards (he did not just break the backboards, the main posts of the entire structure were folded twice), and ending with the 2000s When O'Neal brought about the reform of the zone defense rule, Diesel was the determining factor in many processes throughout the league.
Before Shaq was in the NBA, it was illegal to double-team against a basketball player who didn't have the ball. With the arrival of O'Neal, everything changed, he was too overall and agile to be guarded by one person, Shaq playfully dealt with the poor fellow one on one and knocked the ball in from above.
As with its illustrious predecessors, the NBA is not left out. The league allowed zone defense, in which one player interfered directly with Shaq, and the second, standing in front of him, prevented the post from delivering the ball, in fact, they played two against one. Together with the simple method of "Hack a Shaq" - "Foul on Shaq", this gave some trump cards to the teams against which O'Neal played. But even under those conditions, he managed to pound the league's best centers for most of his career.
Mark Jackson
Position: playing
Performance periods: 1987 - 2004
Changes in the Rules : Rule 5 seconds Mark Jackson
Gabarits may play a decisive role, even if you imagine a low -rise of it. basketball players. Point guard Mark Jackson did not really stand out with his 185 centimeters against the backdrop of the growing and growing NBA of the 90s, but he used what he had quite skillfully and sometimes so often that his tricks forced the NBA to impose limits again.
Against point guards who were smaller than him, Jackson used the following simple trick: he simply stood with his back to them and began to push in the manner of a real center. When the time for possession was slowly coming to an end, and Jackson was pushing his opponent almost close to the ring, the rivals assigned the second basketball player to Mark's guardianship, and he, in turn, quite reasonably passed to a free player.
6 ppg; Highest field goal percentage in a season: .727. And with many of these, the player in second place is far behind. His name appears so often in the scoring record books that his name could be the default response any time a question arises concerning a scoring record in the NBA.
His first contest with the freshmen was against the varsity, which was favored to win its conference that year. Chamberlain later reminisced about the game in the Philadelphia Daily News: “We whipped ’em, 81-71. I had 40 or 42 points, about 30 rebounds, about 15 blocks. I knew I had to show them either I could do it or I couldn’t.”
In May, 1958 Chamberlain decided to forego his senior season at Kansas, opting instead to turn pro. But because of an NBA rule that prevented college players from playing in the league until their class graduated, he was in limbo for one year. He passed the time by playing for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1958-59 for a salary reported to be around $50,000, an astronomical sum at the time.
The league agreed, marking the only time in NBA history that a player was made a territorial selection based on his pre-college roots.
During the next decade, the pair would square off in the playoffs eight times. Chamberlain came away the victor only once. In that initial confrontation, Chamberlain outscored Russell by 81 points, but the Celtics took the series, four games to two.
I hear people today talk about hard fouls. Half the fouls against him were hard fouls.”
506 percentage from the stripe.
3 points per game from 24.1 the season before. During his first seven years Chamberlain scored an average of 39.4 points per game and led the league in scoring all seven seasons, a string matched only by Michael Jordan two decades later. In Chamberlain’s second seven years, he averaged 20.7 points.
Although he failed to win the NBA scoring title for the first time in his career, averaging 24.1 points, Chamberlain recorded the league’s highest shooting percentage (.683), had the most rebounds (24.2 rpg), and was third in assists (7.8 apg).
2 rebounds per contest and was selected to the NBA All-Defensive First Team.
In 1984 he acted in the movie “Conan the Barbarian”. Big-league volleyball attracted his energies for a while, as did tennis, running marathons and even polo. At one point he hoped to challenge Muhammad Ali to a world heavyweight fight.
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To many, Chamberlain is the greatest player in the history of basketball, and it is easy to understand the argument.
Chamberlain signed with the Globetrotters after a frustrating junior season.
Later, these accessories became very fashionable in the NBA. According to Wilt, he got the idea while watching beach volleyball, when the players wrapped a T-shirt or other rags around their foreheads to keep sweat out of their eyes. 
Selznick realized this was a chance. 
Playing against the best teams in the country, we won 87 out of 88 games. The only defeat was in Hawaii,” Rundle is quoted by Robert Cherry in Wilt: Larger Than Life. 
Wilt was happy to be at the forefront of that sexual revolution. In his autobiography, the athlete boasted that he had 20 thousand women. 
“Whether we won or lost, he always cheered me up. I think what people don't know is that he was a really empathetic, caring and generous person," Cathy said. 
com / globalookpress .com 
We were ready to create all the conditions, to pay decent money, - the famous Soviet binder Vyacheslav Zaitsev writes in his book. - It was interesting to try, and we did not doubt our own superiority. But the Central Committee of the CPSU thought and answered: "No!". 
“His attacks were incredibly hard to stop. No one had seen such force before. He was a formidable weapon,” his former teammate told InsideHook Craig Thompson . 
Without him, the league was doomed, because 5 thousand spectators in the stands are not able to cover all costs. In addition, the owners of the Denver Comets club Robert and David Casey were arrested right at halftime for drug trafficking. From that moment on, everything rolled into the abyss and after season-1979 league closed. 
But this was not the most revolutionary change associated with the Chamberlain name. Since free kicks were never his forte, Wilt invented the following way of breaking: he stood on the line, threw the ball into the backboard, then took two steps, jumped out and, catching the rebounded ball in the air, stuck it into the ring. In other words, what is now a show-piece in an All-Star game or a dunk contest was for Chamberlain a regular gaming routine. 
I loved it very much and very much. In the late 70s and early 80s, there wasn't a man in the NBA who - pardon the pun - had more broken shields than Dawkins. 
With all his accomplishments, antics and jumps, Shaq, meanwhile, is the only center since Wilt Chamberlain to have so dominated his opponents. 
Together with the simple method of "Hack a Shaq" - "Foul on Shaq", this gave some trump cards to the teams against which O'Neal played. But even under those conditions, he managed to pound the league's best centers for most of his career. 
